


to be for reason

by CrumblingAsh



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied Relationships, Natasha Feels, Natasha can become anyone, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Natasha, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, The bugs in Steve's DC apartment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:23:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5155250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrumblingAsh/pseuds/CrumblingAsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha can't listen anymore, to the way the bugs in Steve's apartment pick up the way he cries himself to sleep every night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to be for reason

* * *

 

To make a Black Widow, you pull a little girl from the fragile clutches of her born reality, lead her away from her home and family, and treat her kindly.

And then you rip her apart.

You let her enjoy the indulgences of childhood and quietly use them to unravel her – happy and fantastical cartoons with subliminal messages, soft beds you chain her to so that she cannot leave your provided comfort, chocolates on platters in front of her that may or may not be laced with poison. Toys that bite back without inclination or warning, guardians who kick as well as soothe, and friends – you allow her to have all of the friends she desires. And then you make her kill them with her own hands, one by one, under the knowledge that if she doesn’t, _they_ will kill _her_ instead. You make sure that she is able to see her hands as the weapons they are.

You ignore her pained whimpers at night and the silent pleading in her eyes that begs you please no even as she snaps the neck of another friend who hadn’t really been a friend at all.

You break her down until the person she had been born to be leaks out through the cracks and dies in a puddle on the floor. And then you build her back up again in misshapen pieces; sharp edges; no longer a little girl, no longer one person.

A Black Widow comes inside of one deceptive, tempting body, but a Black Widow is made up of many, many different people. Different names, different faces, different histories and genders. Dozens of identities inside of one mind, one vessel. Perhaps, somewhere under them all, is the little girl who had once been the only person inside of the body. Perhaps, beneath all of the cartoons and the lives stolen and the soul-crushing realization that the body is nothing more than a tool to be used for means other than her own, the child still waits inside, forgotten and almost dead. But she’s just another Widow, too – another lie. Because even if that little girl does exist, she is not a real part of the woman who stands in her place now.

To make a Black Widow, you steal a little girl from the life she has, and you tear her to shreds. A Black Widow must be able to become anyone, anything, at any time – to leave behind a remnant of her original self at the forefront of her mind is to fail.

 

* * *

 

 

Her body has been molded, touched, and used by countless calloused hands throughout her life. Her lips have formed smiles in the face of degrading names and whispered, filthy promises. She has been told her worth time and again, every ounce of it attached to her body, as her quick fingers steal secrets with no remorse. She has traveled, she has seen, she has been, and she knows that there are few good men in this world.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

She counts Clint Barton as one of those few.

“No,” she responds evenly as she flicks her eyelashes carefully over the mascara brush in her hand. She does, however, smile slightly at the annoyed sound that follows her reply.

“But you’re going to do it anyway.” Clint doesn’t sound half as discouraging as he probably wants, which only makes her smile widen as she flips the brush over to her other eye.

“Do you think I shouldn’t?” She presses, though she already knows the answer. She can hear every shuffle of his feet, the brushing of his pant legs against his skin – behind her, he’s fidgeting, wanting to say something different than what he knows is right. “ _Barton_ ,” she snaps, but keeps it playful. He’s not doing anything wrong.

“…We know that it works,” he allows. He can’t not; she’s done this for him a handful of times, each one a success. “But we don’t know if it’ll work on _him_. This is uncharted territory, Natasha.” His hand lands on her shoulder, gentle, but not hesitant. Clint has never been scared of her. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. I’m just saying … you don’t know how he could he react.”

Clint Barton is one of the world’s few good men.

Her eyes leave her own image to find his reflection in the mirror. He meets her gaze evenly, and knows what she knows.

Steve Rogers is also one of those men.

She’d been expecting, as time had worn on and he’d spent more of his days wandering around this new century, that the legendary goodness of Steve Rogers would fade away; would be eroded by the realities of this time, if not by the bitterness born of the aftershocks of his service and losses. She’d been expecting maybe the birth of pride, in the way the world recognizes and lauds him for his existence, or for him to fall into a spiral of drugs and drinks and hopelessness in an effort to find something that would be able to numb him out until he could die. He’d be entitled to all of those options, with what he’s gone through. No one, not even herself, would have begrudged him any of it.

But Rogers has remained a good person. She’s seen with her own eyes as he’s comforted children lost in stores, as he’s walked around a store’s entire parking lot just to collect all the stray shopping carts and put them away, as he’d propped open the door of his apartment building for someone moving in, and then had helped them with their heavier furniture. Each time with an embarrassed flush to his face when he’d been thanked, or a satisfied, small nod to himself when there’d been no one around at all to witness his actions.

Clint’s hand squeezes her arm lightly, and she raises an eyebrow at him.

“Tell me that you can keep listening to him every night,” she challenges bluntly, watches as Clint winces. “Tell me you’re alright with it.”

There’s a room on the back of the fourteenth floor of the Triskelion, monitored twenty-four-seven by techs and threat analysts, that plays a live feed of the audio inside of Rogers’ apartment. During the day, it’s quiet; during the evening, it’s filled with nineteen-forties music or the soft sounds of a low-volume television; at night, every night, the sounds that come through are very different. Bugging the room or home of a SHIELD agent is standard procedure, and every agent knows it.

But Steve Rogers is not an agent of SHIELD – at least, not in the way that she and Clint are. He doesn’t know that the microphones hidden inside of his picture frames and light fixtures catch every hitch of his breath as he cries at night, pick up each stuttered exhale, every quietly muttered name. Hours and hours of them, until the repetition tricks his mind into sleep to get away, but even then, the sounds don’t really stop. He doesn’t hear the whispers, the jokes made by some of the staff, or hear the pitying words of others. He’s a good man that doesn’t know.

“You know I’m not,” Clint says softly, an undercurrent of anger in his tone that flows in the opposite direction of her. “You know it. But he’s in a bad place, Natasha, and he’s not exactly your run-of-the-mill sort of guy. He’s more than capable of taking you down.”

“He won’t.”

Her eyes move from him and back to her own reflection; signature red tresses have been lost to the power of deep brown, spiraled into a style of curls no longer relevant to the times that are relevant now. She relaxes her shoulders just enough to lose their sense of unease, softens her painted-red smile; one fades away and another comes back.

“Hand me that bottle, would you?” She requests then, reaching out her hand. The English accent isn’t and has never been and is now hers.

She has studied Margaret Carter tirelessly for four days. She thinks she may admire her.

Clint’s hand obediently leaves her shoulder – seconds later, it carefully places a textured glass bottle against her palm. The amber liquid inside is light, less like alcohol and more like honey. She ignores the pump and instead untwists the cap, feeling it against her fingers as she tips it upside down; dabs it against her wrists, along the curve of her neck, and even in the creases of her elbows. The strength of it won’t last long; it doesn’t need to. The purpose is to calm, not overwhelm. Not even to really deceive.

“What’s that scent?” Clint asks as she stands. He’s holding a pair of black flats in one hand and a small device in the other. She brushes a kiss of thanks – uncharacteristic – against his cheek.

“Peggy.”

 

* * *

 

DC is a quieter city than Manhattan will ever hope to be, and there are no less than seven specially trained SHIELD agents guarding Rogers’ apartment building at any given time. Any intruder would need to be either highly trained, or highly suicidal, to attempt a breaking in.

She has no problems, slipping through the window of the uselessly large kitchen, her feet soundless against the flooring.

She can already hear the small, almost inconsequential sobs from the bedroom.

It would take almost nothing to alert Captain America to the arrival of an uninvited guest – a wrong step, a too-hard breath. But Steve Rogers is just a grieving man, so trapped in unstable pain that the fear of physical pain is nonexistent to him. Right now, in this unit he’s meant to call home, she isn’t a threat to Steve Rogers, and as such, is not a threat to Captain America. Or at least, not an unwanted one.

At the edge of the hallway, she pauses, bracing her hand lightly against the wall as she closes her eyes. The lipstick is a different weight on her lips, and the perfume is the scent of the past. She breathes in deeply, holds it, and then lets it out twice as slow.

Her eyes open again to the sound of a tiny, broken whine.

And she moves.

Rogers is large man, broad and tall and built with muscle, but on his bed of white sheets, vaguely lit under the city’s lights, he looks impossibly small. Curled around the pillow he’s clutching almost violently in his hands, it’s as if he’s tried to make himself into a ball, the smallest possible target. His eyes are screwed tightly shut, each breath a burst of pain, but he’s asleep. He’s asleep, his face wet with tears he probably doesn’t know he’s leaving behind, fingers digging into the pillow like it can save him. He could be drowning. He could be falling. He could be bleeding out on a battlefield, surrounded by his men and no voices at all.

She slips the device from her bra, pushes in on its center, and lays it silently on his dresser.

The bugs are dead.

She inhales once more, the smell of the perfume drifting into her throat, and moves again.

The bed dips beneath her weight, not enough to disrupt his form, but enough that he tenses at the change. Still asleep, expecting a new twist in whatever nightmare currently pinning him down. He chokes out another cry, this one louder, and she watches as her hand reaches out for his shoulder, passes his shoulder, and clasps loosely around his collarbone.

“Shh,” she whispers, slowly wrapping herself around him. Peggy’s voice comes from her throat, deep and comforting. “It’s alright, darling. I promise.”

Rogers’ sobs abruptly silence. He’s still tight, still curled up within himself, but he’s motionless. Listening to her, she realizes as she comes in closer, hitching her chin against his shoulder. A second passes, and then another – he’s pulling in deeper breaths, taking in the scent of the perfume like it’s a drug. He’s relaxing back into her, though it’s in small increments; he’s unsure, but desperate.

“Sleep,” she murmurs into his ear, pressing her body closer so that she, and not his nightmare, can hold him. Next to him, like this, she feels impossibly large. “I’m here, Steve. You can sleep. I’m here.”

She cradles him for hours, until his shaking has died to little shivers and his tears come, still fast, but without noise.

 

* * *

 

 

For five weeks, she does this routine. Not every night – four times a week in the beginning, slowly tapering them down to wean him off of his need for her. But for five weeks, she doesn’t fail him.

Some nights, he’ll say Peggy’s name. Other nights, he’ll call for the man named Bucky. There are a few where he just turns into her, buries his face into her perfumed throat, and lets silent tears fall with not a word spoken.

It’s not a permanent fix. It can’t be. She’s Peggy when she allows herself to be, but she can’t do that to him. Rogers – _Steve_ , as he is to her mind now – is still breathing, still alive, still here. She cannot give him a piece of a life that is now in the past; allowing him to forever have something that doesn’t exist would only hurt him further.

Though she wishes that she could.

“He’s lonely,” she says to Clint after the final night, when she’s come back from Steve for the last time. Clint’s waiting for her, as he always is, his arms only opening up after she’s shed her shoes, her jacket, tied up her dyed-brown hair. “He needs something to hold onto. Some _one_.”

“Maybe he just needs a friend,” he suggests as he wraps her in a hard hug. The perfume has faded away; the only thing she has left of Peggy now is the paint staining her lips.

She thinks of the way Steve still holds his pillow, the way he’d always been so eager for her touch. “Hmm.” It’s neither an agreement or disagreement.

Clint’s chest vibrates against her cheek as he laughs, low and fond. “Maybe he just needs a Nat.”

She pulls back enough to stare at him, head cocked and eyes considering.

Clint stares back with the same look, moving to brush his thumb across her bottom lip, smoothing some of the paint off. “Nat,” he says firmly as he does it again. His thumb is tainted red. “Natasha.”

“…Okay,” she permits, and lets herself be pulled back in for another hug.

 

* * *

 

 

Three months later, when her hair is once a different shade of red _(“It’s orange. I don’t – your hair is orange.” “I like it. Is there a problem, Clint?” “… Nope. No problem. Orange is awesome.”)_ and longer and straightened instead of curled and she hasn’t worn lipstick or perfume in weeks, she meets Steve Rogers in neither a battlefield or his bed, but in Fury’s office, with his eye closely watching them both.

Steve looks healthier. The shadows are not completely gone from his eyes (if they ever will be), but the smile that kicks up on his face is of genuine pleasure as he shakes her hand. “Agent Romanoff,” he greets, and she delights in hearing the happy note in his voice. “Good to see you again. Fury says we’re going to be working together.”

She knows that he’s been by to see Peggy recently – the real Peggy. She wonders if he’s found the gift box on her nightstand addressed to him with a bottle of the perfume inside. She’d copied Carter’s handwriting exactly, and it isn’t as if the older woman will remember if she’d actually been the one to package it for him. She wonders if he sprays it at night.

His eyes are bright and intelligent as he stares down at her, not a tear in sight, and she’s surprised that the smile on her own face is just as genuine as his. “Fury says a lot of things,” she says slyly, smirking a little at the disgruntled noise the Director makes and at the amused look Steve’s face instantly adopts. “But this one, at least, is true. And call me Natasha. Agent Romanoff is a mouthful.” His hand dwarfs hers, but it’s warm and gentle.

“I can do that,” Steve agrees. “Natasha. Definitely easier to say.”

Natasha’s smile doesn’t dim even as Fury starts talking.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **In answer to this prompt I got on tumblr (and is also posted on tumblr):** Anonymous asked: _There was this story you wrote a bit ago where Steve lets Tony call him Bruce during sex and it got me thinking. Perfume is something we really connect emotions, memories and most importantly people to, so if you feel like it, could you write a story in which A lets B pretend they're with C using a perfume/cologne C uses. I don't really mind which pairing, as long as it's avengers._


End file.
